Summary
Strategy games have a long and storied relationship with history, probably because almost every strategy game finds its DNA in wargaming, which originated out of old-school army simulation. History has a massive potential for settings, themes, and gameplay ideas, which has been the secret sauce to some of the best strategy games ever made.
Whether it’s the games of Paradox, who pay very careful attention to history, or all-time great RTS games, there are plenty of great historical strategy games. As a note, this list is ranked by how much a history fan might get out of these games, not on the quality of the games themselves, though the two overlap quite a lot.
A lot of ink has been spilled trying to encapsulate the sheer immensity ofAge of Empires2’s influence over the strategy game genre since its release in 1999, and it’s still going strong in modernity thanks to a brilliant remaster released in 2019 that makes the gamea great entry point for beginners.
While its gameplay is certainly excellent, there’s a clear love from the devs for the historical mashup, where civilizations from different cultures and times all around the world can be examined closely, and smashed together like action figures. It’s historical catnip that puts hypothetical military questions into glorious pixel clarity.
While it’s hard to pick just oneCivilizationgame to be the best for a history fan,Civilization 5with all its expansions marks the perfect cross between historical detail and gameplay abstraction that makes it a great introduction to countless periods of history.
Not only does the game dynamically show how terrain influences culture, economies, and militaries, but it also serves as an introduction to ideologies like fascism and communism, as well as bringing to light important historical figures from around the world a player may not have seen before.Civilization 5is the perfect history primer.
Paradox games will show up a few times on this list for good reasons. Their entire model is based around a series of franchises that simulate distinct periods in human history, with each game taking a differing gameplay focus to explore how that period came to be, and how it led into the next.
ForVictoria 3, while it lacks some historical flavor that history gamers may love, it is one of the best models of how industrial economics led to massive cultural, military, and power shifts through the 1800s, and it demonstrates exactly how difficult it is for social progress to take place in rural economies. It’s pretty punchy stuff, but it does a great job of bringing less immediately exciting historical context to the forefront and hasa vibrant mod scene.
A lot of WW2 games tend to either be on such a macro scale that the moment-to-moment gameplay of a battle is lost, or they are Spielberg-inflected action films where the grand scale is lost.Company of Heroes 2somehow manages to do both.
Engaging on several fronts across WW2, players both play on a macro scale and see the ebbs and flows of entire fronts, as well as controlling the micro-decisions of squadrons in the field, kitting them out, and enacting real-time strategy with obsessive historical detail. For WW2 fans, this one is a must.
Of all the periods in global history, video games have tended to struggle the most with the Renaissance and early Modern period, precisely because of its difficult subject matter of colonialism, religion, and revolution, which makes it hard to craft a singular narrative.
Europa Universalis 4grasps this difficult period perfectly, leading players down specific routes to show through gameplay how colonies became crucial for empires to function, how international trade worked, the logistics of massive armies, civil wars, and religious fervor. It never shies away from the difficult material, which makes it an absolutely fantastic game for players interested in this era, as well asbeginners looking for an entry pointinto the Paradox game formula.
While the popularity of Paradox games tends to ebb and flow, none is more popular in the mainstream than theCrusader Kingsfranchise, particularly the relatively newCrusader Kings 3that transferred the old Clauswitz engine into 3D with generally great results.
InCrusader Kings 3, players are tasked with guiding a single dynasty from the 800s all the way through the Medieval period to the 1400s. That means court intrigue, religious crusades, diplomacy, and a whole lot of conflict. Recent DLCs have done a great job of filling in areas such as the Byzantine Empire and Iberia with further historical flavor, making this the premier option for Medieval history fans.
While Creative Assembly may have peaked withTotal War: Warhammer 3in creating their grandest strategy game ever, the old-school historical strategy fans always come back to the endlessly great Shogun games, particularlyTotal War: Shogun 2, asthe best Creative Assembly ever were.
Serving as a sequel to Creative Assembly’s very first game,Total War: Shogun 2does a great job of telling the story of the Sengoku period in Japan, and even goes as far as telling the story of how Sakoku ended in Japan. For anyone interested in Japanese history, this one is a must play.
Hearts of Iron 4has gathered a fearsome reputation for very good reason. The game is formidable, with near countless factors to consider in a real-time simulation of WW2 on a macro level. However, there are no other WW2 games that have such depth of content for historical fans in particular.
That’s because, with DLCs, the vast majority of the game’s nations have bespoke focus trees that let players get a sense of the historical context and content of that nation during WW2, telling the story of that history through gameplay, and even taking alternate history paths to further explore these specific nations. It’s an amazingly deep look into WW2, and is yet to be surpassed in strategy gaming.
